


the sand upon that place

by tree_tops



Category: TWICE (Band)
Genre: hopefully not all bittersweet, late night conversations written late at night
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-05
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23027695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tree_tops/pseuds/tree_tops
Summary: a collection of late night phone conversations
Relationships: Chou Tzuyu/Son Chaeyoung
Comments: 19
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

When Chaeyoung gets back home, the sky has turned grey, sprouting rainclouds low enough that they brush the top of her apartment building, sending a comfortable darkness through her sixteenth-floor window. There's an envelope sitting on the top of the pile on her living room table, and her mother's soft, sad smile, and Chaeyoung doesn't know how she figures it out, but she does.

Tzuyu calls her at 2am. Chaeyoung lets her phone vibrate until it's nearly off the table before picking it up.

"I'm not in France anymore," she says, before Tzuyu can greet her. "There's no more time difference." Tzuyu knows this, of course.

But there's something dully tender in it, that Chaeyoung can still hear Tzuyu's smile through the static, miles and miles away. "Hello to you too," Tzuyu says, softly. Chaeyoung hasn't seen her in the flesh in a year, maybe more. The last memory of her through a video call a month ago, Tzuyu in the back of a van stuck in endless traffic.

"Hello," Chaeyoung says.

"Hello," Tzuyu says.

Chaeyoung slings an arm across her eyes. It gives her courage, somehow.

"I won't pretend that I haven't received it."

Tzuyu is merciful enough not to pretend either. "Will you congratulate me?"

Chaeyoung hums. There must be a car with a deafening engine passing by on the street below, if she listens hard enough. Something to focus on. "The whole nation is congratulating you," Chaeyoung says, finally, and tries not to sound anything other than happy. There's been an endless stream of news articles - the CEO of one of the biggest conglomerates in Taiwan. Handsome, strong-jawed. Chaeyoung remembers Tzuyu's first descriptor. Nice. _Nice means boring and you'll get bored_ , Chaeyoung had told her, while they were washing their hands side by side in the restaurant bathroom, Chaeyoung seized with a sudden and horrible impulse to be cruel.

("Forgive me," Chaeyoung had told her, later, outside, when the rest had trickled away to their own apartments. Tzuyu's heavy gaze on her face. Tzuyu's hands pulling away from her own where Chaeyoung's thumb had been brushing absentmindedly at the skin between her thumb and index finger.

"You're not allowed to do that," Tzuyu said, softly, but there was something sharp flashing in her eyes. "It's not fair."

"What?" Chaeyoung said.

" _That_ ," Tzuyu said, sounding a horrible kind of angry. The corners of her lips turning down in the way they tended to do. "Making me feel bad for being happy without you.")

That was a different time, and a different place, and Chaeyoung wants to ask for forgiveness even now, even though the cracks have mended and Tzuyu is her friend again. Just a friend.

"You always said you wanted to get married in Switzerland," Chaeyoung says, tripping over her own tongue, and Tzuyu laughs.

"Taiwan is nice this time of the year."

"It's nice wherever you are," Chaeyoung finds herself saying before she can stop herself, and Tzuyu's quiet, steadying breaths against the receiver stop. Fuck. "Sorry. Just - "

"It's fine," Tzuyu says, finally. Awkwardly. But it's not, because it's two in the morning, and Chaeyoung's tongue is loose, and she'll undo all the good she's done if she isn't more careful. Then again, Tzuyu should have been the careful one. It was a device of her own kind of childish want, Chaeyoung supposes, even if it's quieter. Tzuyu passes her the match, and Chaeyoung has to keep from lighting them on fire.

"I've never been to Taiwan," Chaeyoung says.

The match:

"I would," Tzuyu says, suddenly. "I would, even now, if you asked me to."

And even now she is vague, Chaeyoung thinks, to distract from the ache that's started to stretch her chest wide open. Plausible deniability, Chaeyoung supposes. Wonders if Tzuyu's fiance is in the other room or right next to her, learning the contours of her face. The stubborn set of her eyebrows. The way she can't keep her eyes open when someone kisses her.

_Then leave him_ , she could say. But she has unlearned that kind of cruelty years ago, looking upon Tzuyu's round, stricken face.

"I've already bought my dress," she says, instead, voice too happy. Hears the breath Tzuyu lets out on the other side of the line. "The plane tickets are taking a little while because Nayeon unnie's in charge of them."

Tzuyu's voice shakes. "Come by sea instead, if all else fails."

"I'll swim if I have to." There's a laugh lost somewhere inside her chest. Tzuyu's smile, young and bright and open, flashing behind her eyelids. 

"Won't you congratulate me?" Tzuyu asks, again, voice wet. The sound of the ocean in Chaeyoung's ears.

"Congratulations," Chaeyoung breathes, letting the fist by her side unfurl quietly in the darkness. Finds, somehow, that she's smiling. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."


	2. Chapter 2

Tzuyu bats haphazardly at her bedside table when her phone rings. The ringtone is an old song, one of their very first ones, and Tzuyu doesn't really know if she chose it for the sentimentality or because it's so effective in getting her out of bed with something like rage. Somewhere around the fourth refrain of _I'm gonna be a star_ , Tzuyu disconnects the charging cable and peers at the screen.

"Chaeyoung?" Tzuyu mumbles into the receiver. The light from the phone stings at her eyes.

"It's jammed up my window," Chaeyoung tells her, too-loud voice making Tzuyu wince. Of course Chaeyoung wouldn't care that it was 4 in the morning, or even think to offer an apology first, and Tzuyu starts to smile despite herself, shaking her head in fond exasperation. No one will see it, here, in her room. Maybe Gucci, but he's still sleeping soundly on her futon.

"What are you talking about?"

"The vine we saw outside my apartment," Chaeyoung says.

"It jammed up your window?"

Chaeyoung is tapping at something in the background. Probably her easel, from the hollow sound of it - maybe she was up drawing and lost track of time. Tzuyu has missed her - not too much, but dully, like a phantom injury after she got into a fight with a boy in elementary school that's long healed.

"Mm," Chaeyoung hums, and then she lets out a laugh, the childish one that always sent something curling in Tzuyu's gut. "You told me to tell you when it flowered."

Tzuyu sits up in bed. The dull moonlight pools at where her feet are.

"You couldn't text me?" _At a reasonable time_ , Tzuyu almost adds, but bites her tongue. She doesn't mean that. She'll never mean that, with Chaeyoung. The surprises are always warm, somehow.

"I wanted to hear your voice," Chaeyoung says, simply, and if it were anyone else it might sound romantic. But Tzuyu doesn't want to entertain that thought with Chaeyoung.

"Okay," Tzuyu deadpans. "Here it is."

Then Chaeyoung is guffawing over the phone, and Tzuyu's gut is curling endlessly, and it just all seems so unfair. Tzuyu is here, far away from her, and somehow she's still making her feel warm all over. She pulls the covers up to her neck with her free hand, and listens to Chaeyoung's laughter petering away on the other side of the line.

"What did you do today?" Chaeyoung asks, when she finally catches her breath, and that was the other thing Tzuyu never quite understood about her. Where her mind went, and what she was thinking at any time, and how she always seemed to answer Tzuyu's questions without really answering them at all. But Tzuyu only knows how to indulge her.

"Um," Tzuyu stalls. It was a lazy day with nothing that she imagines would interest Chaeyoung, but -

"Tell me everything," Chaeyoung says, brightly. "Like whether you had to wipe Gucci's poop off the pavement."

"He was well behaved when we walked him in the park," Tzuyu offers.

"Okay..." Chaeyoung says, and Tzuyu can imagine the way she's holding her phone pressed hands-free to the side of her face, laying with her feet sticking out from under the duvet. How she used to call her mother when Tzuyu slept over, humming away while Tzuyu made hot chocolate for both of them in big, animal-shaped mugs. Tzuyu wonders if Chaeyoung's still hung her shiba mug on the rack.

"In the morning I had porridge," Tzuyu continues, and laughs a little when Chaeyoung makes a light _oo_ ing noise. "Then I took a walk in the river that's a little far away from my house. It's called Tamsui -"

" _Tamswee_ ," Chaeyoung parrots, and Tzuyu hums in acknowledgement. "Something like that. I walked until my legs ached, then I came home and watched that new drama - you know, the one with Jeongyeon unnie's favourite actor - _Heart to Heart_ -"

"A Korean one?"

Tzuyu nods before remembering that Chaeyoung can't see her. "Yeah," Tzuyu laughs. "We kind of have Korean drama fever here."

"That's cool," Chaeyoung says, and the tapping starts again, somewhere in the background, followed by something that sounds awfully like a crack.

"Is everything okay, Chaeng?" Tzuyu asks, and Chaeyoung just makes another soothing sound.

Chaeyoung's voice comes out a little muffled the next time she speaks. Tzuyu taps her index finger against the back of her phone. "Yeah, you watched a drama with your mother. What did you have for dinner?"

"Why are you asking?" Tzuyu asks, finally, a little confused, and hears Chaeyoung let out a faraway breath on the other side of the line. 

"Because I want to know," Chaeyoung says, finally, as if it's obvious, before another crack resounds from the other side of the line. Tzuyu contemplates arguing for a moment, but it's four in the morning and Chaeyoung's voice is soft, and the warmth of her heater makes her think wondrous things.

"Budae Jjigae. We ordered in - I told you my parents are bad at cooking -"

"Yeah," Chaeyoung laughs, and Tzuyu think it's funny that Chaeyoung is relearning all of this now, when she doesn't have to anymore. They're not - there's no contractual obligation, so -

"When I tried to push the window open, I snapped one of the vines. But they've turned into such an overgrowth that they just kind of... have you ever tried to push open a door where the hinges are all rusty?"

"Hinges? Rusty?" Tzuyu asks, turning the words around in her head.

"Like, old things," Chaeyoung tries, "they don't move well."

"Oh," Tzuyu says. And she shouldn't be embarrassed of it, after half a year of being back in Taiwan, but Chaeyoung says all the same - "No, sorry, those are uncommon words. I should have -"

"It's fine," Tzuyu tells her. "Hadn't you opened the window at least once before it got like that?"

Chaeyoung lets out a little huff. She can imagine her scratching at the back of her head, clad in one of those old thirft store sweaters she liked wearing to sleep, chewing at the side of her mouth as she tries to conjure a nonsensical excuse. Tzuyu remembers a lot of things she shouldn't in more detail than she should.

"I just forget. About these things."

These things. Tzuyu steals a glance at the time. 4:24.

"Shouldn't we - don't you have schedules tomorrow?"

"There were flowers, when I looked closer. They're small white ones that only bloom in winter, I went to read about it on Naver. Isn't that crazy?"

"Yes," Tzuyu offers, because she doesn't know what to say. 

"There were flowers, and I could tell you. I painted - remember when we were looking at the outside of the building and you told me the vine was going to swallow my house?"

"I didn't say that," Tzuyu counters. Not in those words, at least.

"You looked really beautiful that day," Chaeyoung says, softly, and something inside Tzuyu's chest unravels like a ribbon, endless and long and frightening and - 

"Sorry?"

"You looked really beautiful that day," Chaeyoung says, again, hesitant this time. "I never told you that."

"Chaeng..."

"Anyway," she says, and Tzuyu wants to not notice the way Chaeyoung's voice trembles. Tzuyu doesn't think she can speak, herself, now, and it's always Chaeyoung, coming in and creating a riot in her heart. "I painted you, looking up at the vines. I didn't use photos or anything because you - when - in my mind, you were always -"

"Chaeng," Tzuyu tries, again, because she should say something. Because she should say _something._

"You were right," Chaeyoung says, abruptly, and Tzuyu doesn't think to interrupt. "The vines grew, and they covered the handle, and there were little flowers everywhere. You were right, even though you left before you could see it. So I just wanted to tell you that."

" _Chaeyoung_ ," Tzuyu says, one more time, but Chaeyoung's voice is already further away. 

"Sorry. I'm really fucking stupid."

"No -"

"I'll just - goodnight."


	3. Chapter 3

"Hello," Tzuyu says, when Chaeyoung picks up, because there are certain things about her that will never change.

"Hello," Chaeyoung answers, because she likes the things about Tzuyu that don't change.

Tzuyu texted her about five separate times just this morning, first about cancelling their meeting, then about having to take a plane, then about waiting up for her to call after she arrived in Taiwan to make up for it. Chaeyoung had woken up after all of that, the mid-afternoon sun through her window startling her awake. She'd gotten up, brushed her teeth, had a cup of hot chocolate, and then messaged Tzuyu _i love you_ , because it was easy, and because it was true, and because Tzuyu wouldn't read anything dangerous into it.

Tzuyu had just sent back a picture of her at the airport queue checking in her bags, and Chaeyoung had laughed into her spoonful of cereal.

"What did you - did you even eat dinner?" Tzuyu asks, and Chaeyoung feels caught.

"I'm becoming too predictable," Chaeyoung smiles, even if Tzuyu can't see it, sweeping the puzzle she was working on to the side of the kitchen table. She guesses she should probably make something - it's too late, and after her brother started moonlighting as a delivery worker she hasn't had the heart to order anything past midnight. "What should I have tonight?"

Chaeyoung makes a show of opening her fridge door, putting Tzuyu on speaker so she can hear the pop of the vacuum unsealing itself.

Tzuyu hums. She sounds like she's on a car, Chaeyoung guesses, the low whir of the engine starting up here and there when the traffic lights turn green.

"I put some pesto in the last time," Tzuyu says. "Behind your fruits." And then Chaeyoung hears her mutter something in Mandarin that she doesn't understand. True to her word, Chaeyoung finds a bottle of pesto hidden neatly behind the cut of guava that's been sitting in her fridge for longer than should be safe. She's surprised Tzuyu hadn't thrown it out.

"I bought you a carton of eggs too. They'll be nice hard-boiled."

"I feel like you're babying me," Chaeyoung says, only half-joking, and Tzuyu lets out something that sounds like a snort on the other side of the line. "It's very disrespectful. We're the same age."

"I think it's called being concerned," Tzuyu says mildly, before the line cuts out into static. Chaeyoung waits. She takes the pesto out, reads the label carefully, and then puts it back into the fridge. The line sparks back to life.

"I'm going to make some ramen," Chaeyoung decides.

"The instant kind?"

"I was too busy being a singer to learn how to cook, Tzuyu-ssi," Chaeyoung says, and it's so nice, to hear Tzuyu's laugh.

"I think it's doable," Tzuyu offers. She's been colonizing Chaeyoung's kitchen recently because hers is "too small", and the exhaust pipe is in the wrong place, and it's easier cooking for more than one person because she always has leftovers. There's a slam of the car door on the other side of the line, and more mummuring. The sound of wind, wild and surely outdoors, hitting the receiver.

"You couldn't wait until you got home to call?" Chaeyoung asks, but it's more like - a statement. A happy one, and Tzuyu must surely hear it in her voice too. It's a little too transparent, and Chaeyoung lets herself think about what it all means, sometimes, before she stops herself. Then, softer, "it sounds windy. You should wear thicker clothes."

Chaeyoung imagines winter there must still be cold, even if she's never experienced it herself. It's not like Korea, Tzuyu had said. It was warmer, and felt like home. And Chaeyoung had only nodded, because home was different for them, and home will always be different for them, and she was restless with that knowledge.

Tzuyu had a hard time adjusting, at first, and Chaeyoung hadn't known about it at all. Not until Tzuyu told her, the two of them walking in the winter wind. Tzuyu's hand freezing cold when Chaeyoung took it, and blew hot air against her fingers until Tzuyu pulled away, face red from what was surely the cold. That was the first night, Chaeyoung thinks. That she wanted to tell her something - anything, and said nothing instead. She'd never had problems being brave before, but the words kept getting stuck in her throat, and again and again until she's forgotten the shape of them, left only with Tzuyu's soft, delicate features and the words she doesn't have anymore.

"Chaeng?" Tzuyu asks, and Chaeyoung realizes she'd stopped paying attention because she was thinking about the slopes of Tzuyu's face. Fuck.

"Yeah," Chaeyoung tries, "sorry, was cooking."

Tzuyu sounds confused. "You're a very quiet chef."

Chaeyoung laughs, pulling the block of noodles out of the packet and placing a pot onto the stove, haphazardly pouring in cups of water. "You'll find that my talents are endless, Tzuyu," Chaeyoung says again, with a loud, thick, accent, and Tzuyu laughs loud enough that Chaeyoung can hear her through all of it - the wind, and the dog that's barking.

"I dreamt about you," Tzuyu says, suddenly, and Chaeyoung doesn't know what to say. What she wants to hear.

So she says stupidly: "there's too much ramen." And there is, because Chaeyoung accidentally opened the jumbo pack.

Tzuyu isn't listening. "Us, actually. You were very old," Tzuyu is saying, as if she's trying to make sense of it herself. Chaeyoung turns off the stove. Leaves the noodles on a stray plate and curls into one of the high kitchen chairs with the long back, tucking her chin against her knees. "I sounded very old, but I couldn't really see myself."

"How old?"

Tzuyu laughs. "I think you were about.... sixty," she says, and Chaeyoung recognizes the smile in her voice. "Salt and pepper hair. So I must have been that too."

Chaeyoung can entertain Tzuyu in this, even if she should really be chasing her to bed for the shoot tomorrow. Today, Chaeyoung realizes, looking at the clock.

"What was I wearing?"

The wind sounds have gone. Chaeyoung imagines Tzuyu is curled up somewhere in bed, Gucci buried next to her. Later, she'll sit with her mother and watch TV, and call up her friends, and live the life she's always had to compromise on for the sake of something a little bigger than herself.

"A vest," Tzuyu says, and Chaeyoung can hear her thinking. "Maybe one of those long skirts - I don't know, I think was just looking at your face most of the time. You were very beautiful," Tzuyu says, "even when you're old. You will be very beautiful," Tzuyu corrects, because they're talking about the future, technically.

Tzuyu makes Chaeyoung so afraid, sometimes. With the way she says simple things and means them.

"I guess that means I'll still be around to annoy you when we're old," Chaeyoung offers, because she doesn't trust herself to say anything else.

A silence, like a long, endless string that Chaeyoung will never have enough courage to pull at.

"Something like that," Tzuyu says, softly, finally.

Chaeyoung forces out a yawn. Tzuyu won't care enough about herself to sleep, but Chaeyoung -

"I'll let you sleep," Tzuyu says, like clockwork, and something slices through Chaeyoung's chest.

"You will be too," Chaeyoung's traitorous, impulsive mouth blurts. It was so easy to say it, in the past, without this ball tightening endlessly behind her lungs.

Tzuyu pauses. "Sorry?"

"You -" will be beautiful too. So beautiful it'll hurt to look at. "You'll be asleep too," Chaeyoung says, awkwardly, and hears Tzuyu let out a soft laugh on the other side of the line.

"Thank you," Tzuyu says, as if she knows. "I'll try to dream of you."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a shorter one this time

  
Tzuyu has made it all the way to the park outside her apartment when her phone starts to ring. 

"You left your coat behind," Chaeyoung says, without preamble. Her voice is sour. 

Her fingers are cold around the metal of her phone. Chaeyoung had convinced her to get a thin, barely-there protector to match hers, which just seems ludicrous and impractical now. It's winter, and her hands are cold, and she's standing outside the glass doors of her apartment lobby.

"I'll come back to get it another day," Tzuyu decides, finally. Watches her breath condense in front of her in the air. She doesn't want to go into the apartment, because there are picture frames of them in the living room and on the vanity, and a photo of them tacked on the fridge. It feels like a poor place for a battleground. 

Chaeyoung makes another noise on the other side of the line that sounds something like a sigh. Nothing like an apology, not that Tzuyu had been expecting one. When she looks around, the park is empty at this time of the night, so she ventures there instead. Chaeyoung has always liked the blue and red swings.

"Are you going to be like this every time we fight?"

"Like what?"

"I don't want to say it," Chaeyoung says, and Tzuyu feels something horrible bloom inside her chest. It's not - it could never be resentment. But it is something, and it feels like someone has placed something dull and painful behind her ribs.

"Why not?" Tzuyu asks. The swings are too low, so her legs jut out when she settles on the seat. The leaves are all brown now, on the ground.

" _Baby_ ," Chaeyoung tries, and the name is sweet, but - it's that voice she has, when she's tired. When Tzuyu reaches out in bed and she turns away, making up some excuse about being too exhausted to talk.

It's freezing. Tzuyu doesn't have the energy to say anything meaningless, so she doesn't.

"Are you back home, at least?" Chaeyoung asks, again, and the venom that was in her voice has drained away into something like - concern. She must hear the wind whipping into the mouthpiece. "The walk back must have been cold, if you -"

"I think I'm trying my best," Tzuyu says, and she sounds strange to herself, like there's something wedged in her throat. She's been so given to crying, these days, because of Chaeyoung. Over Chaeyoung. Walking back to her apartment in the dead of night. Waking up to an empty bed. 

"Tzuyu -"

"Don't you think we're just being silly? Where is this going?"

Her hands are so cold. Everything is cold, and the wind is whipping into the holes in her knitted sweater, and Tzuyu doesn't want to cry in the middle of a park. 

"I think we're being brave," Chaeyoung says, softly. But this time, it doesn't bring any triumphant swell in Tzuyu's chest, not like the first time when she sent in the deposit for her rental apartment and bought a ticket back to Seoul. There's no victory march, or beautiful picture of possibility. All following Chaeyoung's bravery did was bring her back here, with her feet in two countries and a thousand plane rides between Seoul and Taipei, all for a girl who doesn't think she loves her half the time.

"What did you think it would be like? Being with me."

Chaeyoung lets out a frustrated noise on the other side of the line. "Easier," Chaeyoung says, finally. And it's - horrible. To hear, and to know. To give a voice to the thought Tzuyu's always had in her head, anyway.

"What happens the next time I have to go back to Taipei? Are you going to ask me if I'm running away again?"

"No - "

"Because I will have to," Tzuyu says, and it feels good to say it. "Again and again, and if you keep -"

"I'm sorry," Chaeyoung says, finally. It's a concession, as much as she's willing to give these days, on better days when they aren't falling apart. "I shouldn't have said that."

"No," Tzuyu says. "Probably not."

The metal of the swing is cold enough that she can feel it through her jeans, and the position - slumped over, knees bent - is hurting her back, while the seat just keeps swaying back and forth with the effort of it. It feels quite like she's trying to settle into something that wasn't made to fit her after all. 


End file.
